Marseilles, one hears while traveling through Europe, is the most vicious
town in France.
Whether or not this ancient seaport, whose history reaches deep into
the shadows of antiquity, is deserving of a criticism so sweeping and
so condemnatory, I do not know. Such, at any rate, is the reputation it
suffers among travelers.
All roads in Marseilles lead to La Cannebière, a street of splendid
cafés. Being a sort of hyphen that connects the waterfront with the
fashionable hotels and shops of the Rue Noailles, it swarms with a
curious blend of dregs and pickings. Up from the Quai de la Fraternité
come sailors hungry for the pleasures a few hours’ shore leave will
offer; Algerian troops, on their way to Africa, jostle English soldiers
back from India; adventurers and _le monde élégant_, pausing in flight
to or from the Riviera, and the inevitable Magdalens, spatter its length
with color and charge it with restlessness.
Late one afternoon last winter I drifted through this famous
thoroughfare, looking for a place among the tables that edge its
pavements. It had become my habit to sit for half an hour before dinner
somewhere along the street, drink an appetizer, and expect the crowd to
entertain me. The rows of iron chairs were filled with earlier comers,
who sat contentedly behind their _apéritifs_ or cups of chocolate, but at
last, in front of the Café de l’Univers, I found a vacant back row table,
which I quickly possessed. With a glass of _vermouth cassis_ on the table
beside me, I yielded to the lure of seaport excitement.
My thoughts were soon interrupted, however, by an American voice asking
in French if the other chair at my table was taken. I turned to assure
the gentleman it was not, that he was in no way intruding—and I looked
into the face of Lawrence Bainridge.
“Hello, Bayard,” was his casual greeting. A bit too casual, I thought,
considering the fact we had not seen each other for nearly two years.
I, contrariwise, must fairly have gasped, “Good Lord! What are you doing
here?” for, as he swung the unoccupied chair about and sat down, he said,
“Well, what’s so strange about meeting me on La Cannebière?”
There was nothing strange about it; and I wondered at the amazement
which so energetically had voiced itself. A rich, itinerant artist,
Lawrence had zig-zagged several times around the world to paint unknown
by-ways and hidden corners. Astonishment at meeting him in Marseilles
was therefore absurd. Also, I felt he might construe my lack of
_savoir faire_ as a blunt refusal to play up to his well-known and
fondly-cherished reputation as a globe trotter. He was childish in
certain respects—artists are.
The waiter quickly fetched a champagne cocktail and a package of English
cigarettes. The cocktail Lawrence downed in a gulp and called for more.
The second he drank with more restraint.
Though I had not seen him since two summers before—at Land’s End, an
isolated village in Massachusetts—our conversation was rambling and
disjointed, like that of incompatible strangers who find no ease in
silence. This annoyed me, for our similarity of tastes, I felt, should
more than outweigh the separation.
As the late afternoon merged into early evening, the mistral blew its
cold and sinister breath out to the Mediterranean. We drank steadily,
Lawrence all the while jibing at me for clinging to so impotent a
mixture as vermouth, currant juice and seltzer. He had reached his fifth
cocktail, but through the exercise of will, apparently, was still sober.
Nevertheless, he worried me.
Furtively, almost defensively, Lawrence sat in his chair. I reacted to
his attitude by bracing myself against an intangible, though imminent,
danger which thickened the atmosphere. He breathed jerkily, emitting from
time to time a sharp clicking sound, as though part of his breathing
mechanism had suddenly refused to function. Quivers ran through his body
and ended in a twitch.
But he spoke with a crisp enunciation, and so precisely that each
word seemed to have been scoured and weighed before utterance. On not
a syllable was the checkrein loosened. I sensed a splendid effort at
self-control.
I suddenly recalled the wild absurdity of Lawrence’s recent work. In
Paris, three months before, I had gone to his exhibition at the Vendome
Galleries and left the place convinced that Lawrence Bainridge had gone
stark mad.
“Flowers, _Messieurs_?” A flower girl, her wicker tray heaped with
heavy-scented blossoms, paused before us. “No? Ah, _Messieurs_, but one
little rose apiece—for luck!” she said.
Then she picked up a red rose bud and pinned it to the lapel of
Lawrence’s coat.
“_Ugh!_ Take it away!” he screamed. “I can’t stand it!” He tore the
flower from his coat and hurled it into the gutter.
“Lawrence!” I reproved, “You’re drunk.”
“No, I’m not drunk,” he protested. Contrition had subdued his voice.
“But—I can’t stand—the smell—of roses.”
Thinking to avoid a scene, I suggested we take a walk. He said it might
be a good idea, first, though, he would fill his cigarette case. A
subterfuge, I told myself, to regain composure, and an obvious one.
Lawrence had never been obvious.
At that moment there passed before us on the sidewalk such a ghastly
thing that my scalp tingled and the flesh on my legs seemed to shrivel
and fall away.
It was a man whose face was like a hideous mask; the left side—young
and unblemished; but the right half—so mutilated that description would
nauseate. Fair was divided from foul by a line running down the exact
center of forehead, nose and chin.
* * * * *
My exclamation of horror drew Lawrence’s attention to the repellent
sight. At that moment the gruesome thing turned full upon us.
Lawrence fumbled with his cigarettes; the case fell from his trembling
hands and clattered to the pavement. Quickly he reached down, but did
not straighten up again until after the man—a sailor, to judge from his
rolling gait, though he wore no uniform—had gone.
“Poor soul,” I said. “How his fingers must ache to choke the life from
the _Boche_ responsible for that.”
Lawrence made no reply. He was drained of blood. He sat rigid, petrified.
“In Paris and London,” I continued, “one sees hundreds of _mutilés_—the
war’s driftwood—and I have trained myself to look unflinchingly
into their eyes. But”—I glanced in the direction the sailor had
disappeared—“my histronic ability would fail me there.”
Still Lawrence made no move or sound. That he was profoundly touched
I knew, for a sensitiveness, abnormal in its refinement, had been his
lifelong curse. It had prevented his marriage to a young woman in whom
were combined, he thought at one time, all the qualities that appeal to a
man of esthetic temperament.
In his studio, one afternoon, they were planning for the wedding.
Lawrence recalled a newly-acquired _object d’art_ and took it from a
cabinet. The treasure was an exquisite bit of ancient Egyptian glass,
a spherulate bowl, so delicate of line and so ethereally opalescent of
color that it always made me think of a bubble poised to float away.
I can imagine how he carried it across the room—with that caressing
touch of velvet-tipped fingers peculiar to artists. The young woman, in
order to examine it closely, grabbed the bowl and proceeded to paw it as
a prospector might a bit of rock. Lawrence said afterward that had she
struck him he could not have been more shocked. He broke the engagement
that afternoon.
“Come, drink up, man!” I urged. “Stop looking as though you’d seen a
ghost.”
“Things other than ghosts can haunt one,” he answered in a pinched tone.
We ordered drinks again, with misgivings on my part, for I felt the
trembling man opposite me already had had too much. He sat slumped in
his chair, shoulders hunched forward, and stared straight before him.
Reminiscent or speculative, I could not tell.
Then he began to tell me a story that explained many things. His words
were no longer crisp; he now spoke in a heavy, monotonous way, with many
pauses, pressing his hands together in a gesture of anguish.
“The odor of that rose,” he said, “and the sight—I can’t stand the smell
of roses! Not since two summers ago. I met a Portuguese sailor on the
Wharf one day—you know—in that damn place—Land’s End. Had planned a
canvas, and all summer had been looking for a model—a type.
“A Portuguese Apollo he was—but a Portuguese devil, too. Didn’t find that
out till later. I stopped him and asked would he pose. Conceited swine!
From his smile I knew it was vanity, not industry, that made him accept.”
A venomous hate wove its way through Lawrence’s phrases. He continued:
“Well—he called at my studio—the next afternoon—and I started the
picture. He was a find. Dramatic. An inspiration.
“During the rest periods Pedro—that was his name—would lie on the floor
and talk about himself while I made tea. God! How vain he was! Boasted of
his success with women—his affairs. They were many. Quite plausible. He
spurned the Bay and its fishing, and shipped on merchant-men. The ports
of the world were his haunting ground, he said. Swashbuckling bully!”
To hear Lawrence speak so bitterly of Land’s End and one of its people
was puzzling, for the extraordinary note sounded in that small New
England town by its so-called foreign settlement, descendants of
Portuguese fishermen who came over some seventy years ago and settled
along the New England coast, had appealed strongly to his artistic
appreciation two years before. He had looked upon these natives as
gentle, lovable folk, but to me their black eyes, heavy-lidded and
drowsy, had always suggested smoldering fires, not dreams; their
excessive tranquillity I thought crafty, hinting of vendettas.
Lawrence picked up the thread of his story:
“One afternoon Pedro began talking about a Portuguese funeral in town
that day. A friend of his had died. I dislike funerals—corpses and
such—even the mention of them. Always have. Told him to shut up. Instead,
he began to tell of an interrupted funeral in Singapore he once had seen.
Spared no details. Losing patience and temper, I flung a tube of paint
which struck him on the head. He was furious. I told him I was sorry.
“‘Pedro,’ I explained, ‘ever since I can remember, things connected with
death have been the only things I’ve feared. I have never in my life
been in a cemetery—and I have never seen a dead body. Just to hear of
them brings out a cold sweat.’ Pedro laughed and said cemeteries—or dead
bodies—couldn’t hurt one.”
This phase of Lawrence’s susceptibility I had not known. And then his
pictures in Paris danced before me. What had Pedro to do with them? What
had Pedro to do with the change in my friend? But I asked no questions
lest I rouse Lawrence to a stubborn silence.
I found myself fidgeting about, peering suddenly into the crowd as if to
catch the gaze of hypnotic eyes. Once I saw the _mutilé_ standing across
the street beside a kiosk, watching Lawrence, or so I imagined, with
ferocious intensity. My _vis-a-vis_ and his emotional recoils had by that
time become agitating companions.
Yet, in truth, there was much in his surroundings to breed thoughts
of adventure, even crime. Wharf loungers and apaches were slinking
among the well-dressed shoppers who drifted down from the region above.
Fringing the port, only a hundred meters distant, were the dark, twisting
streets of a district noted for its nefarious habits and avoided by the
wary; rumors of tourists who had wandered alone at night into that abyss
of lawlessness, reappearing days later on the tide, skulls crushed and
pockets empty, were far too numerous to pass unheeded. Out beyond the
harbor the Château d’If clung to its rocks, guarding well grim secrets of
a tragic past.
* * * * *
But to return to Lawrence.
“To blot out the Singapore funeral,” he said, “I painted quickly. Makes
me concentrate. Got so interested I stopped only on account of bad light.
Put on my hat and left the studio—with Pedro—for a walk. Fresh air
clears the brain. Must have been exhausted, for I walked along without
seeing. Just followed Pedro, I suppose. A bend in the road—and I woke
up—galvanized with terror.
“Before me stood the entrance to a graveyard. The stones bristled ghostly
in the twilight. I halted—alert.”
The stem of the glass, which Lawrence nervously had been twirling, broke,
and his unfinished cocktail spilled upon the table.
“I couldn’t go on—on through that forest of spectral marble. Pedro
continued to walk. Was some distance ahead before he noticed I had
stopped. He turned and told me to come along. I refused. He laughed—a
derisive laugh—then spit out a single word—‘_Coward!_’
“I’ve been through jungles in India. Gone deep into China where no white
man had ever been. Know Calcutta—Port Said—explored the worst slums of
the world—and I had never been called a coward before.
“‘You don’t understand, Pedro—I _can’t_, I _can’t_ go on!’ He laughed
again—like a hyena.
“‘Yes,’ Pedro said, a coward. How they will laugh—when I tell!’
“Had never been called that before—you know. I began walking
forward—slowly. My legs trembled, but I walked. Passed through the gate.
“‘That’s right,’ Pedro said. ‘There’s nothing to be afraid of.’
“‘No—nothing,’ I answered, my jaws chattering.
“Then Pedro said, ‘I’m going to the grave of my friend who was buried
today and say a prayer, take a rose from his grave and dry it—to carry in
a little bag—always—for good luck. No harm comes then. _You’ll_ take a
rose, too.’
“I saw a large mound of flowers. The air was strong with perfume.
Roses.... We reached the grave. Pedro stopped, knelt down and said a
prayer. Shadows under the trees were black and the leaves rattled like
bones. I wanted to run—but I stood beside Pedro—and shivered. Pedro took
a rose from the grave and put it in his pocket. Then he took another, got
up and offered it to me.
“‘No!’ I cried, drawing away. ‘I won’t touch it!’
“Pedro said, ‘You’ve got to be cured.’ He pointed to a large flat stone
lying flat on the ground beside him, and explained:
“‘Over a hundred years ago—you can see the date when it’s light—a funny
man had this grave made. Built it like a cistern. Brick walls. Look!’ and
he slid the stone to one side. Pedro was strong.
“I refused to look. Kept my eyes on the path. A gust of wind blew my hat
against Pedro, and it fell to the ground.
“As I stooped to pick it up, he pushed me—_into the grave_!”
* * * * *
The horror of this piece of perversity got me.
“Lawrence!” I exclaimed. “You don’t mean it!”
“Yes,” he answered, in that new tone, so flat and spiritless. “I sank
into something—soft.... Pedro’s laugh sounded far away, and he closed up
the grave—with the stone.
“My throat was in a vice. Couldn’t make a sound. Tried to gather strength
for one big scream—then something somewhere in me snapped. ‘_Tsing!_’ it
went, soft and little.
“Don’t know how long I was there. It seemed an eternity. I lived on—with
the dead man—and crawling things. I don’t know. There may have been
nothing at all. At last I saw a rift above—the night sky—and Pedro
reached down to pull me out.
“When he came the next afternoon I told him I must rest for several days.
My nerves were bad. All night I lay awake—and thought—and planned. At
daybreak I fell asleep. In the afternoon I went to Boston.
“Three days later, back in Land’s End, I settled my accounts. All but
one. Told the neighbors I was leaving for New York next day. Gave
instructions to have my things packed and shipped to me there.
“Pedro came as usual in the afternoon. I worked as though nothing had
happened. He got tired and lay on the floor. I boiled some water for tea.
Very, very carefully I made that tea.
“‘What kind of tea is this?’ Pedro asked. ‘It tastes so queer.’
“‘A new kind,’ I told him.
“He drank, then lay back—asleep.
“From a shelf of etching materials I took a bottle. The liquid inside was
clear. So harmless it looked! Poured some into a cup. Filled the cup with
water, then knelt down beside the sleeping Pedro—dipped a feather into
the liquid—and painted half his handsome face. Nitric acid—bites deep....
“Pedro’s groans were silenced with a gag. More tea for rest and sleep.
“The streets that night were empty as I half carried, half dragged Pedro
to the shanty where he lived alone. I threw him on the bed and looked
without pity on his face.
“No—there was nothing—to be afraid of, I told him. But Pedro didn’t hear.
“Don Juan’s career was finished. Apollo had become repulsive. My last
debt was paid.
“I packed two bags and caught the early train. That afternoon I said
‘Good-bye’ to the islands of Boston Harbor as I steamed out for England.”
Several minutes dragged past before either of us moved.
“Come, let’s go,” was all I could find to say.
* * * * *
I took Lawrence to his hotel and left him at the entrance with a promise
to call the following morning. Unable to keep the appointment, I went
around during the afternoon. He was not in his room and could not be
located.
Deciding to take one last look about the Old Port before leaving for
Paris that night, I strolled down the Rue Noailles, through La Cannebière
and the Quai de la Fraternité, into the Quai de Rive Neuve, where a group
of excited men were gathered at the water’s edge. As I reached the crowd
two sailors with grappling hooks were laying a dripping corpse on the
pavement. It was the body of Lawrence Bainridge.
_The right side of his face was slashed and crushed into a shapeless
mass—but the left half was untouched and fair._
Did Solomon Give Queen of Sheba an Airship?
He certainly did, according to an ancient Abyssinian manuscript, entitled
“The Glory of the Kings,” and recently translated by Sir E. Wallis Budge,
director of Egyptian antiquities in the British Museum. The manuscript
states that Solomon gave to the Queen of Sheba “a vessel wherein one
could traverse the air (or wind), which Solomon had made by the wisdom
that God had given unto him.”
“This ancient manuscript has, of course, been translated many times,”
said Col. Lockwood Marsh, secretary of the Royal Aeronautical Society,
“but the statement about Solomon’s airship apparently escaped the notice
of the reviewers, and it has been left to a flying enthusiast like myself
to discover and proclaim it. Solomon lived in the Tenth century, B. C.,
so it is quite the earliest reference to flying extant, and as such will
be added to our records.”
Theosophists, however, believe there were airships a million years ago in
lost Atlantis.
_Secrets of the Ages Were Sealed in_
_The_ FORTY JARS
_A Strange Story of the Orient_